CM's - how to get started?

[Starberries]

DP & I are moving out of London and setting up as childminders in the next month or two. Both of us are nannies and have all the First Aid/ICP course/CRB etc. Partner is Ofsted registered, should she just ring them up to say she wants to switch from Voluntary to CM register?

Can anyone point me in the direction of a thorough guide (or write one up ) that explains the exact steps on how to register, what is needed, etc?

Any top tips from you all would be great also, anything else I need to know.

Why not ring the local council in your new area and speak to the early years team and the childminding development officer.
Childminders get a discount on the register but not sure whether you will have to attend the meetings held for new childminders or not.
Its easy to switch from minding to nannying but don't know about the other way.

Thanks for your reply - will do that.

Also a question I thought of - can you childmind if you rent your house??? If not, that's us done for

depends on your landlord, ofsted as far as I know don't even ask. You have to inform the insurance company but other than that its up to your landlord.

The LA you are moving to sould tell you wat the requirements are for their area, LA's have differing rules and you will need to register with them also, Most will require you and DH to do their training course which is called ICP or DH1 which is very basic, this is over about 6 wks, 1 evening per week, they will also need to look at your 1st aid certs and CRB checks.

WRT working from rented prop, it depends on your landlord you will need to check prior to moving in as you may be in breach of the tennancy agreement many landlords get cheaper insurance (building only) as tennants agree not to work from home, I had a mate who gave up as couldn't find a landlord who was willing to have a tennant who was minding from home, also check if the landlord is ok with you putting up safety gates etc, as they can damage walls / door frames. As far as ofsted are concerned it souldnt make any difference they will just check to ensure the premises are safe and suitable.

I feel it would be a new reg I'm afraid. So that's 12 weeks (think that was Ofsted's target) though as we all know things can take a lot longer.

Links to various guides to Childminder Registration on the Ofsted Website.

Consider if you will be co-childminding, so both of you being registered childminders in your own right, or if one of you will be an assistant to the other. I expect some childminders on this board can tell you the differences.

even if you are registered with ofsted you have to re-register (submit all the forms again, get a new CRB if your last one isn't deemed in date) to get onto the early years and childcare register.

I live in Bristol and was working as an Ofsted reg nanny when I started to switch to CMing and this is what happened to me.

Week 1: briefing chat

week 2: briefing chat

[have to do these before you can get on the ICP course]

week 3 - week 11: waiting for course to start

Week 12 - week 21: ICP course & tax talk, 1 night a week for 2 hours

week 22: multiple choice exam & supplied with Ofsted forms so that we could get onto the right register

week 34: had my CRB check returned with a letter saying they were waiting for my partners CRB and our social services check

week 36: partners CRB came back

week 37: both social services checks came back

That was it from start to finish and I rang Ofsted abut twice a week to chivvy them along as I had people waiting to start!

HTH

Given that you are moving out of London to somewhere else with the specific reason to set up as childminders... are you able to consider moving to any location, thus able to see what parts of the country have a shortage of childminders and thus move to an area where there is demand?

Nick interesting idea, we have a radius of where we want to be - near partner's family, but there are 3-4 quite large cities within the area that we'd consider moving to.

How would I find out what parts have a shortage?

No easy way, though FIS in each area may be able to give you some idea.
You can search the Ofsted database, which will list all registered childcare providers. By doing various searches using different postcodes and radius searches, you will get an idea for where there is childcare and where there isn't. It's time consuming to do. You can get the postcode of locations using Streetmap.co.uk as that will convert map coordinates to the nearest postcode.